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Tux

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Everything posted by Tux

  1. Absolutely. I honestly can't wait for this bit. The instant autonomy properly arrives the race will be on to work out where the gaps lie in the enemy drones' target recognition algorithms and exploit them. Yellow/pink dazzle camouflage for infantry? Every solider wearing a pair of prosthetic arms to avoid being identified as human? Furry SPGs that grunt and let off an occasional puff of methane in an attempt to "look like" livestock to a particular type of 'walking land mine'? Entire fleets of dirt-cheap drone decoys chirping and hopping around the place, attempting to deceive and absorb the enemy's dirt-cheap attackers faster than they can be produced: the ultimate expression of a war of economies? As an aside, this is not the first time the discussion on this thread has made me consider the massive ****tonne of plastic waste that even near-future wars are going to leave lying about the place. Hopefully materials tech can get ahead of the game soon and provide viable bio-degradable solutions.
  2. If this works as advertised and production is quickly scalable I think we might be looking at the first real anti-drone game-changer.
  3. Following on from this thread, do we have any ideas why we're not seeing more evidence of HARM-type UAVs, yet? LARDs ("Light Anti Radiation Drones"), if you will? From what I can tell it shouldn't be particularly complicated to make a drone which takes off and flies towards (and then into) the strongest local source of radiation at a frequency of your choosing? Wouldn't such a design be equally capable of attacking enemy EW or other enemy emitters (soliders with radios, FPVs, etc.)?
  4. Quoting this note only because it's the most recent one to touch on the naval warfare discussion and I wanted to add some thoughts to that. On ideas for near-term development of Ukraine's naval drones: The aim is to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war on the sea. That will almost always mean that your target is the enemy ship, not the crew. At the moment exposed enemy crew members are not effective at preventing USV attacks. If you can get close to a ship you are therefore much better off pressing home a direct attack on said ship than you are trying to blow grapeshot into the face of some rube balancing an MG on the railings. This will remain the case until exposed crewmembers become a significant threat to your attempts to approach the ship (unlikely to ever happen imo) or until you are able to kill so many crew, so efficiently as to make it a better way of neutralising the ship than sinking it (ditto). Modern warships are already pretty focussed on mitigating the dangers presented by enemy warships, ASMs and torpedoes - those are obviously well-established as primary threats. To my mind then there is not much to be gained in terms of lethality by having USVs try to replicate those types of attack. The Ukrainians' current success is being achieved by threading the eye of the needle between their drones not being torpedoes, ASMs or warships but having features of all three: They are operator-guided and can see their targets from long distances like a warship or a missile and they cause damage on the waterline like various torpedoes or missiles can. The fact they attack on the surface also means they are too low down for conventional anti-ASM defences to effectively target but they are too small and agile for anti-ship weaponry to hit reliably, either. Given the above, I think it's only a matter of time before this capacility gap slams shut and effective countermeasures to the current generation of Sea Baby-type drones are popularised (although whether the Russians will be the ones to do so seems bafflingly uncertain). I've mentioned previously that I do think deployable netting/fencing could be an interim solution which could completely neutralise the current threat or at least significantly increase the number of successful attacks required to damage or sink a vessel. Longer term, I agree that naval drones will become platforms for torpedo-type weapons (correctly noted already as basically the best way to sink something otherwise designed to float). Do we think future navies may start by looking to populate the oceans perhaps even exclusively with torpedo-toting, submersible drones? Presumably they may spend time at the surface to charge batteries, cruise more efficiently and/or to communicate but what combat advantages, if any, would a drone have on the surface if there is no part of it that needs to breathe? Even further hence, I wonder whether the ideal future naval drone might be capable of both flight and submersible operations? Flight could be used for faster travel and to escape from enemy torpedoes; submersion would grant concealment, energy-efficient loitering, etc. You then of course need to start on a 'torpedo' design that can follow a target into the air and potentially back underwater again. Get a few of these machines fighting each other close to shore and you've got yourself a hell of a show, if nothing else!
  5. If we accept a combination of points raised by Butschi, JonS, Capt and others I think we probably agree that unmanned and autonomous weaponry will likely dominate the future battlefield to the extent that whoever wins the "drone war" may gain an unassailable military advantage over the side who are left without a functional drone force. That does mean that whatever passes as "infantry" will have little combat utility beyond supporting operation of the drone force. I would therefore agree that it probably doesn't then follow that infantry will be needed to "hold ground" in the traditional sense of holding it against enemy military action, since they will be incapable of doing so if the enemy still has a functional drone force capable of launching an attack. However if we consider the non-military dimension to "holding ground", perhaps the primary role for human infantry in the future will be closer to a police force than traditional soldiery. They may have to be police officers, diplomats, counsellors, managers, teachers, engineers, artists, partners and merchants; everything needed to help, energise and build trust within a population recently scoured by warfare. I suppose you could call it COIN but really the "infantry" may have to be optimised entirely for winning the hearts and minds of any occupied or liberated population and barely at all for combat. I know there are multiple people on this board who have experience in Afghanistan and Iraq - perhaps they can opine as to what the ideal "infantry" would have been in those theatres, if they could have taken for granted that basically all substantial combat functions were accomplished by autonomous drones.
  6. I imagine there’s an element of “now we’re getting serious” posturing for internal Russian consumption going on, here. Perhaps timed to partially counterbalance the current air war narrative of Russian aircraft starting to take noticeably heavier losses. I also imagine that ‘escort by a flight of Su-34s’ won’t be the only measure they’re taking to be damned sure a shot-down Su-57 isn’t the next thing to hit the headlines.
  7. Interesting but I think several of the criteria listed have been met (or very nearly met) in Ukraine with no nuclear response, yet. The article leaves it until the end to state: ”William Alberque, director of strategy, technology, and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told the FT that Russia likely has a higher threshold for using tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine due to fears it would likely "escalate the conflict and lead to direct intervention by the U.S. or U.K."” Why does the UK always get highlighted like this? I don’t think we could meaningfully ‘directly intervene’ if we tried! [Edit: Ninja Capt at it again. I surrender]
  8. Not surprising. There are just so many things that seem wrong with the FF theory: The A-50, of all types, would be in constant contact with air defence units; An A-50 does not resemble a drone or missile; The A-50 was manoeuvring and releasing countermeasures when the ‘SAM’ in that video was launched - surely any SAM crew in the area would therefore be aware that the AWACS was being targeted and hold their damned fire? As far as I’m aware Russian SAMs do not have an IR seeker head, so the flares and a missile apparently striking one do not make sense; and there are more…
  9. I might be able to believe number 1 was possible if this wasn’t a literal AWACS that got shot down - it was the air defence system! I’m going with number 3. The people videoing it comment on how low the aircraft is flying and modern MANPADS can reach pretty high up in any case.
  10. My thought as well. I’m not aware of a long range SAM that uses an IR seeker. I assume either the A-50’s pilot was panicking and releasing every type of countermeasure he could think of or maybe he couldn’t choose between chaff/flares (i.e. he could either release both or neither). Both of those feel an order of magnitude more likely than that some enterprising Ukrainian pilot got within Fox-2 range of an AWACs 250km behind the front line, although at this point nothing would completely surprise me!
  11. And so, it begins. [edit: dammit, Capt!]
  12. As well as pairing up, convoying, etc. I wonder whether we might start to see deployable torpedo net-type structures being retrofitted to slower/more vulnerable BSF vessels. These drone attacks look like they would struggle to cause much damage if a chain-link net that extends 2m above/below the waters surface could be extended to surround the target’s hull (say 10m out) during an attack.
  13. Nadezhdin’s out, although there’s something wonky about the numbers being reported: “Refusing to give up, Mr Nadezhdin said on social media that he would challenge the decision in Russia's Supreme Court. "I collected more than 200,000 signatures across Russia. We conducted the collection openly and honestly." The Central Election Commission said that more than 9,000 signatures submitted by Mr Nadezhdin were invalid. That left 95,587 names, meaning he was just short of the 100,000 required signatures to register as a candidate, commission member Andrei Shutov said.” I don’t know whether to be encouraged based on the assumption he’s been rejected because the government think he’s too popular, or discouraged that he only managed to get c.200k signatures in the first place.
  14. Yes, I mean something closer to that than to SkyNet.
  15. I just mean the code (not to diminish how complicated that is), not step-by-step following the rationale behind each actual decision it has made. But point well taken - emergent AI may be emerging as we speak.
  16. I think that, by definition, it wouldn't matter whether we believed in it or not. But in any case belief in it or its benefits needn't be any more based on "pure faith" than our assessment of any other new technology versus a hypothetical scenario in which that technology doesn't exist. But we really are into describing pieces of our own pure imagination, now, so I suppose your assessment stands as valid as mine.
  17. Yes we are seeing "emergent" features to AI models in the sense of unexpected outputs. The people that wrote them could still step you through the decision process the AI is supposed to follow though, right? I think there's a difference between that and an AI which is itself emergent and perhaps even dynamic with regards to the rules it follows, though. I enjoy these conversations but am conscious that we are drifting perilously close to a purely philosophical discussion.
  18. If we're talking about AI which could theoretically wage warfare entirely in our place (my concept - I understand it's not what OBJ intended to imply) then I think it is past the point where you'd know what 'decisions' it was making. As The_Capt put it, AI would be expected to "solve for humanity" and guide us without our knowing how. It would have to be able to understand us better than we do ourselves, so would necessarily be an emergent variety of AI rather than one we 'write'. Think Foundation rather than robot overlords.
  19. The term "AI" is doing a lot of legwork in this discussion and, I think, is being used to refer to different things a lot of the time. As previously noted, "AI" of sorts is already integrated into weapon systems at the level of smart munitions and augmented feedback to operators of FPVs, for example. The "AI" I think most people are concerned about/interested in in the context of the next few years is the kind of AI that will be able to meaningfully automate processes which have, to-date, been too complicated or nuanced to take away from human beings: mainly target selection and prosecution within a defined combat zone. That's all fine and those are the types of "AI" which will (I think inevitably) be integrated into our next generation fighting systems. Beyond that there is the kind of AI that starts beying employed against the enemy's AI. For me, this is where things start to get interesting. I think at this point AI is at least as heavily employed in deceiving death swarms and Terminators as it is in driving them and that means that warfare will become extremely dynamic: the best way to defeat an AI-driven war machine is to make sure it doesn't recognise you in the first place and there are countless unimagined ways of making that happen. War, warriors and weapons will only appear recognisable to our eyes for as long as AI doesn't get too good. Once it does start to get there, we will simply change what they looks like (hold that thought). And then we start saying things like: Now please don't misunderstand me; I think that this is an interesting thought and idea to discuss but I also think that, in an effort to scout ahead, it has not-altogether-deliberately strayed a bit off-map. "AI" does not mean the same "AI", any more. If we ever get to the point when "wars are fought exclusively by AI systems" or when people are not involved in warfighting then I see that world reflecting one of two possibilities: People no longer exist. If they did exist then they would still throw shade, b***hslap each other and get into large scale brawls which would take the sociological place of whatever warfare is now that AI has excluded us from in the future and that would then become the new, real warfare. In other words if we are ever excluded from "warfare" because AI is just too damned efficient and lethal then that will suddenly solve absolutely nothing and we will go somewhere else and start fighting again, without it. The people who are unsatisfied by AI-controlled warfare will simply change warfare to be something else entirely. Or; People get imaginative enough to realise that AI isn't best used to target enemy machines with explosives any more than a nuclear reactor is best used to heat the cavalry's stables. If AI is in such a derivative state that wars could theoretically be fought by it to the exclusion of actual people then we should find a far better use for Marvin than what convention would currently consider the military domain. If AI is this powerful it should be working primarily in the information domain, ironing out conflicting certainties (thanks for introducing useful terminology, Capt) at the level of the information people absorb and believe on a day-to-day basis. In this way AI should be winning wars before we even know they've begun and yes, that means that, as far as we're concerned, AI should be preventing warfare altogether. To the extent that such a thing may not be possible, AI should work to mitigate whatever level of conflict turns out to be necessary between human beings but that will probably still mean allowing us to do it ourselves in order to make sure something actually gets resolved in the process. Tldr: I think that, if AI advances to the point that it could exclude us from warfare altogether then the political and natural sciences, healthcare and economics will be the fields upon which those wars are won, not the trenches and treelines around Avdiivka.
  20. Point granted, along with billb’s follow up. Conversation’s moved way on now though.
  21. Not sure the current state of “driverless car” tech supports this. Machines don’t get tired but at the moment they might struggle to see an enemy soldier with a sun tan…
  22. Yeah ok. I guess we’re really talking about whether we can cut up the enemy’s heavy brigades in a heavy EW environment, though? I suppose this hypothetical problem is analogous to Russian spec ops being authorised to fire Shmel rockets at Beslan, where western equivalents would have had to be a little more… tactful. Not sure that counts as the Russians being more effective, though…?
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